Alan Whitehead: Indeed. I was going to say to the Minister, who has gone on the record as having nudged people in his previous post, that I cannot offer him full protection if he carries on nudging people, particularly in pubs. My protection is conditional.
We ought to consider the issue seriously. I appreciate that under the present circumstances of our membership of the EU it would be difficult for the Secretary of State to exercise the sort of powers I am suggesting he might have. However, by the time 2025 comes around, one way or another we will not be a member of the EU. The Secretary of State could therefore exercise that power in the public and the national interest, unfettered by other considerations.
It would be prudent for the Secretary of State to have that power available to him or her so that we can put our affairs in order concerning what I agree continues to be an unlikely sequence of events. We ought to have it on our minds, however, in case those events occur. In that way, we can rescue not only the position of the administrator, but what the company subsequently does in the national interest as far as keeping control of all this data and running a smart meter programme are concerned.